


Talk Dûrin to Me

by nerddowell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, the Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2954876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to <a href="http://combeferre-ish.tumblr.com">combeferre-ish</a> on Tumblr requesting Combeferre and Courfeyrac at <em>the Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies</em> for this prompt:</p><p>consider: the “i work at a movie theatre and i’m cleaning up after the movie is over and you’re the only person left because you’re ugly crying with popcorn over your lap” AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talk Dûrin to Me

Combeferre hummed the _Song of the Lonely Mountain_ to himself as he shuffled between the cinema aisles, wriggling his shoulders as the too-small uniform shirt pinched under his arms in an attempt to stretch over his broad shoulders. Popcorn boxes and empty soda cups littered the floor of the cinema as he made his way along the back row, dropped snacks crunching under his feet, and he swore under his breath as he realises he's just trodden an extra five minutes of hoovering into his work shift. Damn and damn again.

A quiet snuffling sound drew his attention a couple of rows ahead. Working at a cinema, he was used to turning a blind eye to the more emotionally susceptible filmgoers. He couldn't hide the snickering, however, when a man who looked like the love child of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dog the Bounty Hunter a) walked into 27 Dresses in the first place, and then b) left it in a flood of tears that would've sunk Noah's ark. (And by the way, Russell Crowe was drastically miscast in that movie. When Combeferre thinks of Noah - not that he does so often, but when he does - he thinks more of a Liam Neeson type. Kind, fatherly-looking, but able to cause you a lot of pain in likely horrible ways should he choose. Incidentally, _Taken_ is one of his favourite movie franchises, which he gets mocked for by some of his friends. They all seem to think he would echo Enjolras' taste in lofty, intellectual foreign language films and violent Swedish crime thrillers, but the truth is that Combeferre would happily sit in front of something like _Taken_ with no complaints. He's somewhat partial to Liam Neeson.) Funnily enough, the guy ended up working with him, and Combeferre quickly learned that Bahorel has watched more chick flicks and cheesy Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals than Combeferre was even aware existed.

He focused on cleaning the rest of his section of aisles, Bahorel taking the other side, before resigning himself to having to disturb the sobbing wreck in Row 3, seat 10. He approached warily, ready to duck insults, missiles or proclamations of wounded masculinity, to find a young man with wildly curly dark hair, tanned skin and popcorn all over his lap sobbing into the hem of his Thorin Oakenshield tshirt. He tried to bite back his smile and leaned down to speak to him, voice quiet and gentle.

"Hey, sorry but I have to get in here to clean." The guy just nodded and choked back an extremely wet sob to dab at his face with his tshirt and inch his way out of the aisle.

"I would've thought that tshirt was a lost cause," Combeferre said with a hint of his typical dry humour in his tone, and the young man looked affronted.

"How dare you, Thorin Oakenshield is no lost cause-" He lets out a wet laugh, and the tears start again. Combeferre is wondering whether he's all there mentally when the guy speaks again. "Except I guess he was. All of them were. The whole line of Dûrin was doomed, from the very beginning. Still, he survived a dragon attack, a lot of fighting and being insulted by an elf-"

This startled a laugh out of Combeferre, and the guy grinned damply at him. "-So all in all, he was pretty badass."

"Have you read all of them, then? The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit and everything?" Combeferre asked, picking crumbs of popcorn up off the floor to throw into his plastic rubbish sack. The other guy nodded, smiling. "Everything. The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion, the Adventures of Tom Bombadil - I have a tattoo of him, actually-" He lifted up his tshirt to show Combeferre a tattoo stretching from the bottom of his ribcage to just above the waistband of his skinny jeans, of a rotund, red-faced man with a large beard and an even larger hat holding a leaf with four flowers above his head. Combeferre smiled, and showed him his own tattoo, Elvish script on his forearm of the famous Tolkien line, "Not all who wander are lost".

"Tengwar." The young man nodded before flawlessly, effortlessly repeating the phrase in the language it was written in, his voice lilting and deep, and Combeferre feels a swooping sensation in his stomach he's not sure isn't at all akin to falling in love. He feels the blush burning in his cheeks, turning the tips of his ears red - ears which point slightly as though he himself is an elf, which contributed considerably to his own passion for Tolkien as a child; believing he was more closely related to Elrond and Celeborn than to his own, very distant parents was a source of comfort for the young Combeferre.

"What's yours say?" Combeferre asked, pointing to what looked like Old Norse runes around the boy's slim, angular wrists. The young man grinned and pointed to each in turn.

"This one is Dwarvish Angerthas from Moria, _inikhd_ _ê_.' Return to me'. It's what was etched onto Kili's runestone. Weird, right, given that he was an Erebor dwarf?" He looked at Combeferre for an answer, but the other man was too absorbed in admiring the tattoo to respond. And this one is Erebor Angerthas, _khaz_ _âd ai-m_ _ênu_. 'The Dwarves are upon you'." He blushed and grinned sheepishly. "I'm pretty big on the dwarves."

Combeferre grinned. "Nothing wrong with that. I have Elvish ears, look." He pushed back his too-long hair, displaying the delicately-pointed tips of his ears, and a wide smile broke out over Courfeyrac's broad, happy face. "I convinced myself I was an elf when I was about seven, and from then until I was about nine and a half all I spoke at home was Tengwar. I taught myself from the books, an Elvish dictionary I found in a charity shop for three quid, and made a bit up. I can still speak it a bit, the odd phrase, I mean."

The other guy was looking at him with nothing short of adoration in his eyes. It made Combeferre blush and smile weakly, unused to such focused gazing on his face. Usually his ears commandeered a lot of attention, which was why he kept his hair at the grown-out, shaggy length it was to hide them, but never his face.

"You're pretty cool... C-Combeferre," the guy murmured, taking his eyes off Combeferre's just long enough to read his name tag. "I'm Courfeyrac. Well, technically I'm James de Courfeyrac, but I never get called by my first name, and if you add the particle I will cut your cock off and feed it to the goats."

Combeferre laughed, pulling up his other sleeve to show a House Tully tattoo on his other arm, inked into the meaty part of his shoulder. "I'm a Game of Thrones fan too."

Courfeyrac just looked confused. Combeferre couldn't stop laughing.

"I meant the tshirt was too wet to be of any use drying your eyes earlier, by the way," he said with a mischievous grin. Courfeyrac rolled his eyes good-naturedly and laughed.

"So, um. When do you get off tonight?"

"Are you asking me out?" Combeferre asked, as bluntly as possible just to watch Courfeyrac squirm. He bit down on a smile at the wary expression on the other young man's face before he got a hold of himself and nodded as confidently as he could manage.

"Yeah, I am."

"Then I get off at eleven." Combeferre grinned. "Which is," he checked his watch, "ten minutes ago. Bahorel, shift's over!" He called across the cinema, and got a whoop of delight in response. Bahorel dumped his own rubbish sack in the bin as he left, and Combeferre tugged the sleeve of Courfeyrac's tshirt gently.

"C'mon then," he grinned, leading the way out, "You can talk Dûrin to me." Sung to the tune of the Poison song, _Talk Dirty to Me_.

Courfeyrac followed him out in tears of laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr, if you want to request anything, is [right here](http://godlikehektor.tumblr.com)! Feel free to drop me a line!


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